Kalguur has stopped me from playing new leagues and private leagues

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feral_nature#7076 wrote:

imagine some people want this nonsense in base game...
also claim settler to be the peak poe...

I would love to see it core. I'd recommend they tone down the high-end shipping rewards some however, it's a bit much once you optimize it. I would also tweak the mappers to be a bit less hazardous - they would be in a decent state if the burn rate on them was lower. I'd then work to balance out the returns on ores to be a bit better while nerfing farm goods.

But the core concept is a blast and I've had great fun.

I find settlers a wonderful addition to the game. It gives me a secondary set of goals while I am doing other things. I also enjoy the town micro-management and the nuances to it, much in the same way I liked the team-building aspects of Trial of the Ancestors.

Your sim-city is running in the background while you play, adding some much needed variety and depth to the game.

I am honestly amazed that people complain about settlers. It's basically free loot you get while playing or even while you aren't playing. Plus there are recombinators, the crafting bench for enchants and the disenchanting which finally gave all the trash uniques that drop all the time some use.

The process of upgrading the town should be shortened quite a bit if it goes core but other than that i see no issue with the mechanic.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

I am honestly amazed that people complain about settlers. It's basically free loot you get while playing or even while you aren't playing. Plus there are recombinators, the crafting bench for enchants and the disenchanting which finally gave all the trash uniques that drop all the time some use.

The process of upgrading the town should be shortened quite a bit if it goes core but other than that i see no issue with the mechanic.

To be fair, we've now been in Kingsmarch for over 9 months so I expect a lot of things which didn't annoy people during the duration of a league are now sources of irritation. Sort of like how when you're mad at someone, you're annoyed by things that wouldn't bother you under normal circumstances.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

I am honestly amazed that people complain about settlers. It's basically free loot you get while playing or even while you aren't playing. Plus there are recombinators, the crafting bench for enchants and the disenchanting which finally gave all the trash uniques that drop all the time some use.

The process of upgrading the town should be shortened quite a bit if it goes core but other than that i see no issue with the mechanic.

Is it though?

I've never quite forgotten the alch shortage in synthesis from so many avoiding the mechanic and essentially being told drops had been adjusted with the expectation people would be doing the puzzle religiously.

Remember the loot explosion from Incursion? It's gone now and probably the most telling how drops have been essentially just moved around. Breach shards are much lower despite being able to drop in stacks. Even the delirium orbs got nerfed.

Kalguur may not be as irritating, but essentially reminds me of that original synthesis. Also a bit like how incubators are essentially rewards you've already earned that are delayed by having to do extra work. Kalguur basically reduces your standard map drops and moves it into its mechanics. Those mechanics rely heavily on a currency and that currency has currency sinks all over the place on top of being consumed at continuous rates.

When I first started Phrecia I thought the mechanic was nice because it was far more than a reskinned loot explosion like breach, abyss or incursion. But to have nearly completed every map objective (just missing a unique) and gotten two of the 4 voidstones, it just got old. I have mining, farming, shipping, smelting and disenchanting maxed and still need at least several hundred thousand more gold to finish maxing everything....

Its just rearranging of rewards to create the illusion a mechanic is more rewarding when the more likely reality is its only more rewarding because the rewards were reduced everywhere else.

Free loot is the problem. We shouldn't BE getting free loot. It is antithetical to the game loop of an arpg. If I wanted "free passive loot", I'd be playing a wildly different game.

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SeCKSEgai#6175 wrote:

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

I am honestly amazed that people complain about settlers. It's basically free loot you get while playing or even while you aren't playing. Plus there are recombinators, the crafting bench for enchants and the disenchanting which finally gave all the trash uniques that drop all the time some use.

The process of upgrading the town should be shortened quite a bit if it goes core but other than that i see no issue with the mechanic.

Is it though?

I've never quite forgotten the alch shortage in synthesis from so many avoiding the mechanic and essentially being told drops had been adjusted with the expectation people would be doing the puzzle religiously.

Remember the loot explosion from Incursion? It's gone now and probably the most telling how drops have been essentially just moved around. Breach shards are much lower despite being able to drop in stacks. Even the delirium orbs got nerfed.

Kalguur may not be as irritating, but essentially reminds me of that original synthesis. Also a bit like how incubators are essentially rewards you've already earned that are delayed by having to do extra work. Kalguur basically reduces your standard map drops and moves it into its mechanics. Those mechanics rely heavily on a currency and that currency has currency sinks all over the place on top of being consumed at continuous rates.

When I first started Phrecia I thought the mechanic was nice because it was far more than a reskinned loot explosion like breach, abyss or incursion. But to have nearly completed every map objective (just missing a unique) and gotten two of the 4 voidstones, it just got old. I have mining, farming, shipping, smelting and disenchanting maxed and still need at least several hundred thousand more gold to finish maxing everything....

Its just rearranging of rewards to create the illusion a mechanic is more rewarding when the more likely reality is its only more rewarding because the rewards were reduced everywhere else.

Well, i am sure that drop rates were adjusted somewhat. As far as i know gold replaces item drops so every gold stack you get is one item less. The question is, would you have picked up that item in the first place had it dropped? No you wouldn't have. So we likely aren't losing anything we would have to regret losing. At least subjectively that's how it feels to me. I still get somewhat regular divine drops as per usual and the amount of money i've made thanks to the currency exchange is bonkers.

I also got more high tier uniques this league than ever before though i suspect that is because the constant income from currency exchange allows me to regularly juice my maps rather than use alch and go. And i hardly even used mappers outside of getting the bandit challenge. It's only shipments and even there i only have 2 level 10 guys at work so i am not minmaxing at all. Still feels much more rewarding than standard ever did.

I can totally understand someone getting annoyed by having to build up the town if they played in settlers#2, phrecia and maybe even multiple private leagues. Totally understandable and normal. That's why i also wrote they should make that part easier if it goes core. But the mechanic itself is just fine imo.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Free loot is the problem. We shouldn't BE getting free loot. It is antithetical to the game loop of an arpg. If I wanted "free passive loot", I'd be playing a wildly different game.

The reality is the loot isn't "free" its just been removed from its source and integrated into a different mechanic (at the cost of reducing the droprate\value of other mechanics)

@baharoth15
And don't get me wrong, the whole reason my phrecia leveled past the intended 80 up to 96 is because the settlers mechanic was engaging. But that grind coupled with the requirements to unlock the final two stones would basically require me leveling another character. I've never been so annoyed or had so much trouble finding a vaults of atziri (SSF) and I'd still need the doriyani map too for the challenge.

If I could scale the character up better it wouldn't be so bad but the goalposts keep moving farther out--yet that hasn't stopped nerfbat beatings. I knew she wouldn't scale late well but with an initial goal of just level 80 using skills that could be decent in mediocre gear was practical.

I dread my standard side because I have no room and its hard to justify spending given the uncertain state of things. I dread my settlers character because I still need so much gold to finish the town and yet still need to build up the resources to fill the requested shipments now that said requests are so large. The aspects I used to look forward to are now my disincentives.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

To be fair, we've now been in Kingsmarch for over 9 months so I expect a lot of things which didn't annoy people during the duration of a league are now sources of irritation. Sort of like how when you're mad at someone, you're annoyed by things that wouldn't bother you under normal circumstances.

Yeah, when even I've managed 40/40, you know it's been a long stretch. With the family, there is literally no other way I could have had time to pull it off or reach this level of play outside of standard.

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Free loot is the problem. We shouldn't BE getting free loot. It is antithetical to the game loop of an arpg. If I wanted "free passive loot", I'd be playing a wildly different game.

I don't think it's "free" - to get anything other than bubblegum you have to spend a lot of time farming gold and ores to build up your city - and then you have to farm about 250k per day to feed the city and account for worker attrition/deaths.

You can make about 24k per map with some moderate farming strats, which takes a a couple hours a night unless you're running a really amped up character. If you keep your town running non-stop, you can expect a big ship about every 1.5 to 2 weeks of real time.

Speeding this up? Well, you can only farm so much. You can increate your gold and dust intake, but you still need the crops, and even with all T-10 farmers, you will hit a wall.

The really big gold payouts are gated behind T-17s, an atlas optimized for it, and a very specific gear setup layered on top of 120%+ map rolls, map-device enchants and scarabs. Those people are also laying out serious div for 100k-1.8 million uniques to melt down.

So that's 20-28 hours per shipment to get 20%-50% of a mirror. Most competitive players would consider that a very poor return on time if it were standing alone.

It's a nice bit of added complexity to the game, and I'm enjoying the micro-management a lot. For getting started or playing solo-self-found, the mappers and ore shipments are VERY helpful. Also nice for hardcore players, as you can kill off your mappers instead of yourself on more dangerous content.

___________________________

When/if it goes live I WOULD tweak it some.

- I'd lower the raw currency results from farm shipments - I do think that anything mirror related should be gated behind actual game farming. I'd also up the chances of getting attacked by pirates equal to the amount being shipped. This will force a bit more player interaction and introduce some jeopardy to shipping.

- I'd reduce the amount of ore related items, but try to improve them somewhat. They're already very good, but perhaps tighten up their mod pool and reduce the quantity. Getting 50 items for a maxed ore shipment is a bit clunky to deal with.

- I'd make the maps a bit less dangerous to your mappers. The rewards they bring back seem pretty adequate for the gold cost in running them, but when you tally in deaths/replacement, it is observably worse than simply shipping crops. Perhaps simply reducing the crops reward will be sufficient. That said, the mappers are very useful when the league is new or solo/hard-core. So that should be considered too.

- I LOVE the currency exchange. Excellent mechanic. That HAS to go core.

- Gold for Re-specs is OK. Gambling is OK.

- Recombination is amazing, but it should cost way way more. Perhaps start dropping the recombinators again and require one for the attempt.

- Gold as a drop is great - it has actual value. I love that you don't have to click it THANKS GOD.

- Runecrafting is really fun. I love the crafting options. Please keep this. The only really really broken mod is Haunted items. The rest are mostly just interesting enchants that open build options

- Mining/Smelting - fun mechanic, would love to see them integrated with some atlas passives. I would change up smelting somewhat so that you get more benefit from actually having high-tier smelters. You are almost rewarded for keeping them mid level in the current state.

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Sabranic_SilverDeth#2793 wrote:

I don't think it's "free" - to get anything other than bubblegum you have to spend a lot of time farming gold and ores to build up your city - and then you have to farm about 250k per day to feed the city and account for worker attrition/deaths.

You can make about 24k per map with some moderate farming strats, which takes a a couple hours a night unless you're running a really amped up character. If you keep your town running non-stop, you can expect a big ship about every 1.5 to 2 weeks of real time.

Speeding this up? Well, you can only farm so much. You can increate your gold and dust intake, but you still need the crops, and even with all T-10 farmers, you will hit a wall.

It absolutely IS free, when compared to anything else in the game. You don't even have to click to pick up gold or ore. You hardly even see or care about the numbers. It's not even loot. It's just the "time cost" associated with the idle mechanic. Compare it to every single other out-of-map league mechanic: it has the least actual engagement BY FAR, except to give you a clock to watch.

This is literally the playbook for every single idle game that has ever existed: the laziest, stupidest type of game designed ONLY to prey on people's time to offer the illusion of "reward". Even worse, its MULTIPLE timers stacked on top of each other before any actually usable loot shows up. Loot, by the way, that can be found anywhere else. With the exception of runes.

But it is NOT gameplay. It is entirely passive. And therefore....it doesn't need to and shouldn't exist. Each and every mechanic in an ACTION game, or any active game, should be active. Planning and prep is fine. Creating a layout such as Betrayal and things (which takes time) is fine. But just passively farming currency you don't even click and hardly see, only to then PASSIVELY spend it on timers, with the odd chance of losing "time" as a cost of doing business, is awful. Worker and town upkeep is just a shady way of adding another timer in there with no actual gameplay. You aren't doing anything "league mechanic special" for that....its just completely in the background of the game. As if it doesn't exist, until you remember that you haven't dumped your gold in a while. The most active part of the league: going to the town and dumping your gold, ironically something that shouldn't even be a "thing" design-wise as gold should be used automatically the second you retrieve it in the map, with a percentage of the total gold automatically going to a store for gambling/trading. But no.....they had to have SOME activity.

Everything about Kalguur is just passive passive passive. It is subservient to the game, rather than an active PART of the game. It is the design of a team of people that wanted to do the absolute least amount of work possible. So they stole a tried-and-true time wasting design with no actual substance.